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Climate change and grazing interact to alter flowering patterns in the Mongolian steppe

  • Community ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Socio-economic changes threaten nomadic pastoralism across the world, changing traditional grazing patterns. Such land-use changes will co-occur with climate change, and while both are potentially important determinants of future ecosystem functioning, interactions between them remain poorly understood. We investigated the effects of grazing by large herbivores and climate manipulation using open-top chambers (OTCs) on flower number and flowering species richness in mountain steppe of northern Mongolia. In this region, sedentary pastoralism is replacing nomadic pastoralism, and temperature is predicted to increase. Grazing and OTCs interacted to affect forb flowering richness, which was reduced following grazing removal, and reduced by OTCs in grazed plots only. This interaction was directly linked to the soil moisture and temperature environments created by the experimental treatments: most species flowered when both soil moisture and temperature levels were high (i.e. in grazed plots without OTCs), while fewer species flowered when either temperature, or moisture, or both, were low. Removal of grazing increased the average number of graminoid flowers produced at peak flowering in Year 1, but otherwise grazing removal and OTCs did not affect community-level flower composition. Of four abundant graminoid species examined individually, three showed increased flower number with grazing removal, while one showed the reverse. Four abundant forb species showed no significant response to either treatment. Our results highlight how climate change effects on mountain steppe could be contingent on land-use, and that studies designed to understand ecosystem response to climate change should incorporate co-occurring drivers of change, such as altered grazing regimes.

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Acknowledgments

We thank S. Undrakhbold, A. Lkhagva, the research camp staff, and the US and Mongolian undergraduates who spent their summer in Dalbay. We are particularly grateful to B. Kemps, J. Stahl, and D. Song for data collection, and J. Mortensen and D. Brickley for their help throughout the duration of the project, and for B. Helliker for comments on the experimental design and the manuscript. Support for this research and the PIRE-Mongolia project was provided by the US National Science Foundation (OISE 0729786). The experiment reported here complies with the current laws of Mongolia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Laura A. Spence, Pierre Liancourt, Peter S. Petraitis & Brenda B. Casper

  2. Department of Ecology, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, 210646, Mongolia

    Bazartseren Boldgiv

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  1. Laura A. Spence
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  2. Pierre Liancourt
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  3. Bazartseren Boldgiv
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  4. Peter S. Petraitis
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  5. Brenda B. Casper
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Correspondence to Laura A. Spence.

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Communicated by Melinda Smith.

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Spence, L.A., Liancourt, P., Boldgiv, B. et al. Climate change and grazing interact to alter flowering patterns in the Mongolian steppe. Oecologia 175, 251–260 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-2884-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-2884-z

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